Achieving thermal equilibrium in two-dimensional lattices of interacting nanomagnets has been a key issue on the route to study exotic phases in artificial frustrated magnets. We revisit this issue in artificial one-dimensional kagom\'e spin chains. Imaging arrested micro-states generated by a field demagnetization protocol and analyzing their pairwise spin correlations in real space, we unveil a non-equilibrated physics. Remarkably, this physics can be reformulated into an at-equilibrium one by rewriting the associated spin Hamiltonian in such a way that one of the coupling constants is quenched. We ascribe this effective behavior to a kinetic hinderance during the demagnetization protocol, which induces the formation of local flux closure spin configurations that sometimes compete with the magnetostatic interaction.
@article{arxiv.2310.11933,
title = {Effective interaction quenching in artificial kagom\'e spin chains},
author = {L. Salmon and V. Schánilec and J. Coraux and B. Canals and N. Rougemaille},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.11933},
year = {2023}
}